Happy Weekend Waffle

Hello my dear Waffle friends. Have you had a nice weekend? Mine’s been good. The lovely summer weather is back and we’ve had some delicious food and enjoyable activities.

Friday night we chilled out at home and I cooked chicken liver pasta. It’s basically just onions, chicken livers and single cream. It’s really quick to make and really tasty. Here is stage one..

Then you add the cream and it goes on to look something like this (steamy photo!) before you stir through the pasta.

I served it with a nice bottle of red wine and we watched TV on the sofa afterwards.

Last night we ventured out into Windsor on our bikes. We stopped off at The Swan (see headline photo), our favourite local pub, for a delicious, chilled, locally brewed beer on the way into town. After 10 minutes of cycling I feel one deserves some refreshment 😂….

We then went on to Boatman, by the river. This was our first meal INSIDE a restaurant since lockdown.

With hindsight we picked a stupid night to do this for the first time, everyone was out and up for a party on Saturday night before the rule of six starts tomorrow. We were shocked to see a closely seated table of nine inside, and another table of about eight young lads outside with no attempt at social distancing. The restaurant was well aerated, however, with the big doors to the conservatory open. But it was extremely noisy, which meant I had to shout at the poor waitress who was wearing a mask, but I don’t think shouting in people’s faces is a good idea at the moment. There were three separate tables who sang/shouted “Happy Birthday to you” (projecting possible Covid across to their neighbouring tables) during the evening. I must be a killjoy as I think singing Happy Birthday inside noisy restaurants should be banned until the virus starts to go in the right direction. Whispered versions only please!

Of the 40 new cases in Berkshire this week, 22 of these were reported yesterday in Windsor and Maidenhead area. I am not surprised. We’ve got off quite lightly so far in this part of the country, this cannot last. In Birmingham there were 500 cases this week, so we’re not up there yet, but we can’t go around pretending it’s gone away as clearly it has not. This virus is not done with us yet.

My worries aside, the food was delicious. We both started off with the scallops and then David had a steak with blue cheese sauce and new potatoes. He said it was really good and his plate was completely spotless afterwards. I had the chicken and chips with gravy and green beans which was also excellent. I gobbled up all the yummy chips but was slightly defeated by the two succulent pieces of chicken. A big portion!

David went on to have vanilla ice cream for pudding and I wimped out and had a cappuccino before the cycle ride home.

After some jobs at home this morning, we had a nice lunch outside at Stubbings garden centre. This was my choice.. roasted vegetable and brie quiche with salad and potato salad. It was a good choice! And the sunshine was so lovely. I had to get a summer skirt out this morning as my autumn “capsule” failed me in such pleasant but unexpected weather.

We had a beautiful walk round Boveney/Dorney this afternoon. I have lots of great photos of that to share with you, but I think I’ll do that next time as I have rabitted on about food a lot today, so I might as well just finish off with Waffle news of tonight’s dinner and then leave you all to go and get your cup of tea/snack/dinner/glass of wine 🍷.

We get our supermarket shopping delivered from Ocado which now includes M & S instead of Waitrose food. So far we’re enjoying the change and it doesn’t appear to be more expensive, depending on what products you select. The extremely chocolatey sponge roll is particularly good. I get the feeling the scales are not going to be kind to me tomorrow for my Monday morning weigh in 😂, but the way my job is at the moment I probably need lots of energy to charge through the challenges of the week ahead (that’s my excuse anyway).

Tonight we are having these M & S lamb shanks for the first time. They look promising.

There is a sachet of sauce you have to add later on…

We’ll be having these with boiled potatoes, carrots and mint sauce. 😋 Bye for now. Back Tuesday night with some more load of old Waffle xx